To expand on the poetry I have published here over the last year or so, I thought it would be fun to record readings of some of my favorite pieces from The Cardinal Turns the Corner as well as to introduce newer pieces I have written.
In addition to these readings, I’d like to provide some commentary, background, and/or explanatory notes that situate each poem in whatever experience, memory, or mood inspired it. No writer writes in a vacuum; we are always influenced by something (usually a thousand somethings). 🙂 So, here is Poem Audio #1.
The two poems discussed in this recording are “Falling in Love” from TCTTC and a new piece “Paper Plates.” Each poem has been reprinted below the audio file for those who wish to read along. Enjoy!
“Falling in Love”
The other night I stood for half an hour
Between the night sky and the butterfly wings of sleep,
Trying to count how many times I’ve fallen in love with you.
The streetlights filled our window while you slept,
But all I could do was wander around the room, hands folded,
The wind stirring the leaves on the pavement outside.
For years I have looked beneath the rocks in the river,
Inspected the wrists of jazz drummers
And the breath of blue roses for the full moon.
I have unlaced the fog in the morning
And swept the brushstrokes of dew on the ground
To find the words for our love,
And the candles at every step of our memory,
Lighted by the words we’ve spoken,
They are becoming forest fires.
In my hands are a dozen marbles. When I hold them up to you
To show the colors of my love, the sound of their scattering
On the floor tells me to try again.
And I try again every time,
Finding you over and over in the corner of my eye,
Smiling like the day we first met.
So I stayed awake that night, wondering how
I might manage to hold all this love
When all along it lay quietly in the way our fingers touch when we watch movies,
Your knees bent beneath the blanket,
The hours drifting away like snow.
“Paper Plates”
I’m trying to remember how long we’ve eaten on paper plates,
Cheap napkins with printed lilacs,
Both of us bending the tines of plastic forks
As we slowly keep from speaking.
When did we become so still, so suddenly motionless,
Twin marble statues stuck beneath the weight of water,
Staring in the distance past each other’s ocean shadow?
How did the sunlight in our voices
Fade into the night, our fingers numb
As blackened matches, our gazes turned to separate walls?
There must have been a moment when we accidentally said our last words,
When the sugar in our breath slid deep into our memory,
When our kisses somehow grew stale and
Our styrofoam lips first chipped along the edges.
A little over a year ago, I wrote a 
When Snow White arrives at the dwarves’ cottage, we see a warm and inviting portrayal of Eden: there are chores and tasks to be done (to the blissful tunes of whistling while you work, of course), there is community and fellowship, and the cottage is alive with song and dance. Merriment abounds. The story presents this way of life as a perfect balance of duty and desire; each person has a role to fill, and he or she fills it gladly. Sneezy is the one who sneezes, Happy is the one who is happy, Grumpy is the one who is grumpy, and so on.
Edenic paradise, God’s story tells us, is subject to the rebellion of man. It was only a matter of time before Snow White would face the choice to fall from the warmth and glory of her perfect home. And fall she does as she fills her mouth with the false deliciousness of the Queen’s poisoned apple and succumbs to the deep sleep of death. Yet, this sleeping death is no individual affair; the effects of her sin are not limited to her lifeless body. Indeed, all of nature is bent by her fall, and when the dwarves encase the body of Snow White in the glass coffin, all of creation attends to mourn the death of Beauty. It is a truly eerie scene in the film; Snow White lies beneath the numb sheet of sin and death, quiet and still, as her dwarves weep softly around her and all of the woodland creatures draw near to see and to mourn. In their sorrow, they know that ultimate Beauty has died and their perfect world has been damaged by darkness and evil. All of creation feels the sting.
Eden.Babel 